


Duende

by inkling



Category: Sharpe's Rifles
Genre: Canon - TV, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-01
Updated: 2001-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkling/pseuds/inkling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Standard disclaimers apply:  No copyright infringement intended, no money being made here.  Blame the following flight of fancy on the following: 4 a.m. in the morning and too many repetitions of John Tams singing "Spanish Brides" and "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier" in the headphones (plus a little "Mummer's Dance" and "Marco Polo" from Loreena McKennit).  Oh, and a *few* more than the recommended number of viewings of the brothel scene in "Sharpe's Eagles."   And yes, I put my own spin on Daniel Hagman's history.  Blame it on the muse who wouldn't shut up and got me out of bed at 4 a.m. to write this.</p><p>Slavish thanks and everlasting gratitude as always to akamarykate, squirrel queen beta goddess.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Duende

**Author's Note:**

> Standard disclaimers apply: No copyright infringement intended, no money being made here. Blame the following flight of fancy on the following: 4 a.m. in the morning and too many repetitions of John Tams singing "Spanish Brides" and "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier" in the headphones (plus a little "Mummer's Dance" and "Marco Polo" from Loreena McKennit). Oh, and a *few* more than the recommended number of viewings of the brothel scene in "Sharpe's Eagles." And yes, I put my own spin on Daniel Hagman's history. Blame it on the muse who wouldn't shut up and got me out of bed at 4 a.m. to write this.
> 
> Slavish thanks and everlasting gratitude as always to akamarykate, squirrel queen beta goddess.

Dan thought at first that he was imagining things.  Surely his vision was being affected by the dim lamplight--or maybe that tiny, golden glimmering across the hazy room meant he'd already had too much ale.  The giggling wench beside him insisted on pouring the stuff down his throat whenever he paused between songs.  But he accepted the ale the way he accepted the fact he'd probably wind up bedding the unlovely woman before the night was over.  It was easier that way, not fighting most of what life threw at him, saving his energy for what really mattered.

And fending off the poor, determined whore wasn't what mattered tonight.  What mattered tonight was the music that held him in its fierce grip, the way alcohol or battle captured other men, body and soul.  He'd been taken by battle himself often enough, the smoke and noise and the excitement of seeing enemy after enemy go down before him--the final elation of survival.  But all that was another time and place, and tonight it wasn't the thrill of a well-placed shot, it was the music that had seized him.  Sometimes the melody alone, sometimes the fiddle sawing accompaniment to his voice, both lifting in songs that snared the hearts and minds of the men in the crowded, smoky room in a way that the thin, bitter ale and the bitter, used women here never could.

And there was always the dancing, couples cheering and skipping and swirling to the sound of his fiddle and his voice till the room itself thundered and the tables bounced with a life of their own.

All from his music, for his music.

He tossed his lank, dark hair back and grinned at the screech let out by Harris's partner in this set.  She'd been picked up and twirled dizzily, her fists pounding on the red-headed soldier's back as he spun around in place with her, twice, never losing the beat or his place in the set with the extra move.  Just behind them, Cooper shouted and tried the same move, but it didn't work; his long legs tangled with his partner's skirts on the second go-round, and they landed on the floor, laughing all the way.  Dan laughed too, and winked at the snaggle-toothed woman beside him, while the dance and the music went on.

It was times like this, his soul coming alive as he sang and played and the room coming alive around him, these were the times he knew there had to be a god--a god who loved music and dancing and soldiers.  And for Daniel Hagman, convicted poacher turned Rifleman, Chosen Man, heaven tonight was a fiddle and a song and room full of people.

So when the glint of gold on the shadow behind the rough-hewn pillar first caught his eye, he didn't pay much attention, preferring instead to focus on the soft, smoky lamplight, on his friends, Harris, Perkins, Cooper, and the other soldiers who'd found this particular flea-ridden brothel, all stomping and dancing and twirling with the whores out in the middle of the room.  But then it was time for a break, and even the evening's entertainment had to stop for a moment to catch his breath.  Cradling the fiddle carefully to him, Dan laughingly accepted another drink of ale from the whore beside him, pulling her hand out of his shirt afterwards.  He lifted his eyebrows and gave her an apologetic smile before he turned back to his fiddle.  Poor wench had her work cut out for her; he wasn't ready for anything yet but more tunes.  If she wanted to work so hard for a few coins in her pocket from a ragged old soldier, that was up to her.

Someone called for another song, by name this time, and turning away from the woman's disappointed squint Dan acknowledged the request with a nod and a smile.  He stood again, fiddle snug in the crook of his arm, took a deep breath, and began to sing.

When she finally stepped out of the shadows, halfway through his song, he was completely unprepared.  It wasn't that she was remarkably pretty; the room was dark and hazy enough that most of the soldiers couldn't see the worn and weary condition of the whores there, most of whom were missing at the least a few teeth.  There was no telling if this shade separating slowly from the sheltering darkness was pretty or not, and, unlike the other women in the room, there was nothing inviting about either her dress or her manner.

No, what startled Dan, and nearly lost him his place in the song, was the intensity of her gaze, his sudden realization that her attention was entirely focused on him.  Lips slightly open, her scarf-covered head cocked just to one side, she stared, first at his fiddle, and then up at him, and then back at the instrument singing in his hands.

Dan knew the look; he'd been taken by the music in a similar way at time or two, on the rare chances he'd had to listen to someone else play.  Mesmerized, he thought as he watched her slow advance towards him, singing by rote alone as he remembered the word from a play Harris had been reading out loud to them last week.  Mesmerized, and, like a wild creature, lured out of the shadows into the open by his fiddle, his voice.  His music.

Well, he hadn't been acclaimed the best poacher in the county of Cheshire for nothing.

Arms crossed tightly against her securely laced bodice, the woman edged across the room towards Dan.  Her gaze locked on him, she evaded without looking the hand or two that did grasp at her full skirt, a skirt so long it dragged on the floor as she worked her way closer to the source of the music.  He finished the song, and as he nodded and bowed to the smattering of applause he got, Dan tried to catch her eye, smile an invitation to come closer and listen, to share the music with him.  But the woman had turned away already and was trying to push her way through the crowd back into the shadows.

He swallowed a brief flash of disappointment at her retreat, but even as he did so her flight back into the darkened corner was arrested by the owner of the brothel, a short, muscular man whose hair had all migrated down from the top of his head to his face.  But even the thick mustache and bushy facial whiskers couldn't hide the fact the man had the meanest leer Dan had ever seen.  Grabbing her arm from behind, Rodriguez yanked the woman around to face him, and said something in a low voice.  Fiddle down at his side, Dan stared, and then took a step forward, vaguely uneasy at the man's threatening manner.

But the woman didn't appear to be afraid, she simply stared into Rodriguez's face, unflinching.  Dan hesitated, unsure if she needed his help or not, then simply waited.  The woman didn't nod or smile, but when Rodriguez spoke again, she followed the glance he threw over his shoulder towards Dan, to meet his worried look with her own impassive stare.  Then she turned back to Rodriguez and spoke to him.  Whatever she said, the man didn't like it, pulling her towards him and barking something at her in Spanish.  The woman refused to back down, shaking her head and yanking her arm from his grasp.  But she didn't leave, simply gave Dan another enigmatic look before focusing again on Rodriguez.

Arms gesturing, faces only inches from each other, their argument passed unnoticed in the midst of the busy room, only one ragged Rifleman from Wellington's army watching, warily, as they...bargained.  He recognized the signs from many an encounter in the Marketplace.  Cooper and Harris were the hagglers in their bunch; Dan usually just stood back and tried not to look too interested in anything so he wouldn't mess up whatever deal they were negotiating.  But negotiation was exactly what was going on right now.  His attention captured by the encounter, Dan absently brushed aside the cup of ale that appeared in front of him, and then was forced to turn away and deal with the short prostitute's dismay when it splashed all over her.

He consoled the woman as quickly as he could, accepting the tail of her skirt in his free hand and mopping ineffectively at her bosom with it.  Then he spent the next minute or so fending off her advances again, until she flounced off in a full pout.  Turning, Dan found both protagonists in the middle of the room staring his way.  He shifted uncomfortably, clutching the precious fiddle to his side as he tried to figure what their bargaining had to do with him.

But whatever his role was in their negotiation, he didn't seem to matter in the end.  The woman looked away from him and nodded once at Rodriguez.  With a sideways glance at Dan, Rodriguez nodded in return and the deal, whatever it was, was evidently struck.  With a swirl of her full skirts she turned and, shaking off more groping hands, strode purposefully into the shadows, disappearing, Dan presumed, into the kitchen.  Again, he shoved aside the momentary disappointment, watching instead as Rodriguez clapped his hands and started shouting orders in Spanish.  Observing the results of his commands for a minute, the proprietor, bald head glinting in the lantern light, then wormed his way through the resulting commotion to where Dan stood, his fiddle and bow silent.  Bobbing to a stop directly in front of Dan, Rodriguez's smile oozed forth.

"Uno momento, you play again?  Uno momento?"  Rodriguez pantomimed the bow across the fiddle strings and lifted his eyebrows at Dan.  "You play more?"

Perplexed, Dan nodded, and as Rodriguez leered happily, he suddenly felt an immense and weary pity for any woman who had to deal with this creature--for any reason.  He stepped backwards to get away from the man himself.   Rodriguez smiled again, then turned to answer an anxious query from a man tugging at his elbow.  As the two moved away Dan fumbled for the bench behind him, and then sat, sighing heavily.  The room filled with an accumulated grumbling and muttering as the employees of the brothel shifted the assembled clientele and their whores from their seats.  Then they dragged the wooden tables and benches back further, against the walls, and there was more grumbling as folks began to resettle afterwards.  The end result of everything was that the dance space in the middle of the room was even larger.  Well, hey, Dan could live with that.

Settling in for the moment, he leaned back against the wall, fiddle in his lap.  He closed his eyes, but someone stumbled against his outstretched legs.  Quickly shielding his fiddle with his arms, Dan turned to find Perkins, not-quite-standing in front of him.  The lad was supporting himself against a half-dressed whore, a well-used woman who was probably old enough to be his mother.

Judging by his glazed eyes and flushed cheeks, Perkins was a few more than three sheets to the wind, and Dan looked beyond him to where Harris, considerably more sober, stood with his arm around his own, better-preserved whore.  Catching Dan's sharp gaze, Harris bobbed his head back at Dan, his glasses and curly red hair glinting in the soft light.  Cooper, his long face peering around from behind Harris, nodded as well.  Dan sighed and relaxed his grip on the fiddle just a bit.  He didn't have to worry, the two other men would make sure the woman didn't take more than she was due from the lad for the night.

The two Riflemen stepped around the boy and settled themselves on the bench to either side of Dan, while Perkins, oblivious to his friends' concern, swayed in front of them, burped loudly, and then squeezed the nearest available portion of his companion's anatomy.  She cackled and Dan shook his head.  The boy was really too young to be out "hooring" as Sergeant Harper would say, but the rub of it was if he was old enough to fight and die for King George, he should probably be old enough for this too.  Life was meant to be lived, especially when any one of them might fall to a French bullet on the morrow.  Still, seemed to him a boy should have more time to be innocent, he truly should.   Perkins leaned forward, saved from falling only by the woman's unrelenting grasp on his shirt, and grinned blearily up in Dan's face.

"'Ey, wha's up, Dan?" he slurred.  "Why'ncha play no more?"

Dan shook his head at the boy, reaching out with one hand to ruffle the lad's hair affectionately, before the old whore pulled the boy into a nearby corner.  Shaking his head again, Dan looked to his fiddle, making a minute adjustment to one tuning knob.  Harris slapped his shoulder, and when Dan looked up, he grinned impishly.

"Maybe you frightened them all away with that last song, Dan," he chuckled, then turned to kiss his whore.  To Dan's right, Cooper guffawed, then shifted the woman on his long lap so he could face the other men.  The girl didn't say anything, simply cuddled up against Cooper again, and continued playing with his dark hair as he reached around her for the jug Harris held out across Dan.  Dan smiled at them, at these friends who had been with him in battle, in life both foul and fair, and lived through it all to tell the story.

Then the ubiquitous whore who'd latched onto him when he walked through the door was suddenly in front of him again, offering him another cup of ale.  Dan eyed her for a moment, before he realized he was comparing her unfavorably to the woman who'd been drawn from the shadows by his music.  Regrettably, that woman didn't appear to be one of the available 'ladies' tonight, and this one was right here, in front of him.  She held the cup up again and Dan grinned as he reached for it.  Well, hell, why not?  Singing was thirsty work.

Lifting the cup in silent toast to his comrades first, he drained it in one long gulp, then handed it back to the woman.  For good measure he wrapped his arm around her afterward and drew her to him for a long kiss.  He could afford to be generous, the night was young, life was good for the moment, and there was more music and dancing to come.

The whore, for once having gotten his full attention, was reluctant to give it up, and Dan found himself fighting her, first to protect his fiddle, and then for his freedom to play again.  Harris rescued the fiddle for him, but Dan was on his own when it came to rescuing himself.  Once he'd managed that he spent the next minute or two reassembling his clothing, much to her disgust and the amusement of his fellows.  Their jibes fell loudly into a suddenly silent room while Dan was still at his task, trying to get his shirt retucked to his satisfaction.  He grabbed his fiddle from Harris as the man choked on the ale he'd been drinking, and then Perkins' high voice cut through the smoky room.

"Isha--sheesha Gypsy!"

Dan looked up, and froze.  He blinked once, but the sight in front of him remained the same.  Harris and Cooper both cut loose with appreciative comments, Harris's in Greek, Cooper's in broad Cockney, but Dan had eyes only for the woman standing there.

She'd changed her clothes in the few minutes she'd been absent from the room.  Gone was the long-sleeved blouse, the tightly-laced bodice, and the non-descript scarf on her head.  In their place she wore a sleeveless, tight-fitting top of dark velvet that showed more than a bit of cleavage and left her midriff bare.  The multi-patterned, flowing skirt was the same, but she'd wrapped a narrow sash around the waist, its ends dangling down to mingle with two long braids, all ending only a foot or so above the floor.  A filmy mantilla of red lace, held in place about her head by a golden chain with a few dangling coins, flowed around her shoulders and down her back, covering the rest of her long dark hair.  More golden bracelets and armbands glinted on the arms she once again held crossed against her chest, and earrings made of numerous tiny golden disks dangled at each ear.

She stood and stared at him, and he stood to return the favor.  Her large eyes, set aslant in her face, were black, darker than any he'd ever seen, and her skin was several shades duskier than could be accounted for by just the dim light alone.  Her head barely reaching his shoulder, she was slim, but with pleasing curves the tight, abbreviated bodice and full skirt did nothing to disguise.  Her face was round and angular at the same time, her thin nose a bit too long and turned up at the end, her lips like her figure, slender but pleasingly curved.  Not the prettiest woman in the room by far, she was certainly the most exotic.  There was no smile on her face as she returned him stare for stare, rather there was a challenge in her eyes, and--he blinked and took a second look, just to be sure--a plea.

She'd gotten his invitation after all.  She just had her own ideas about accepting it, her own response to the music.

Rodriguez appeared at her side, and Dan found himself bristling at the proprietary hand the shorter man laid on this woman's arm.  He didn't have a chance to object before Rodriguez turned to him, gesturing towards the Gypsy at his side.

"Gypsy dancer," he announced proudly.  "You play; Agueda, she dance. You play the Gitana music for her, si?"

"S-s-s-sure," Dan stuttered, never taking his eyes off the Gypsy woman, the Gitana, as he hefted his fiddle and bow. *What* was he to play for her?  Nothing he'd played so far tonight would work, nothing...Staring through the smoke into her dark eyes, half-forgotten memories stirred:  campfires, dark faces laughing in the flickering light, men and women singing, swaying and dancing to songs and music played long into the night.  The woods he'd poached in back in Cheshire had been home to more than one kind of wild life.  The woman before him, those long ago dancers, these were the people his own grandmother had come from, her folk destroyed by the same constabulary that had arrested him for poaching and shipped him off to fight in Spain two generations later.

She'd been half-starved, his gran, and scared almost witless when Daniel's poacher grandfather had found her hiding in the woods.  He'd taken her home and nursed her to health, then taken her as his wife.  But no church would bless their union, and so they settled far outside of town and raised their half-wild brood in the wild woods.  Dan himself had been born there, of their son's more legitimate union.  Before he'd gone to work in the mines Dan had spent his boyhood nights either out poaching with his grandfather, or in rapt attention by the fireside as the songs of his grandmother's people bubbled up from within her.  Those songs she'd given him as her only legacy, the music of her people and the fiddle that was the only tangible thing she'd salvaged from the destruction of her "kumpania," her "vitsa."  Her family.

And now this Romany woman stood before him, and he knew the only music that would do was that half-forgotten music of his grandmother's people.  Someone handed him a cup, and he drained it quickly, his eyes never leaving...Agueda's, that was her name.  Damn, he could sure use a drum, but the only one here that could possibly do anything with it was Harris, and the rhythms that were flowing through Dan's mind and down into his arms now were far beyond the curly-haired ruin of a scholar.

He handed the cup back, never looking to see if anyone took it before he released it.  He wiped his mouth with that hand, then took his bow, setting the fiddle to his chest with the other hand.  Still staring at him, Agueda tilted her head to one side, and Dan realized then that her head was bobbing, just slightly, but to the same beat he had unconsciously begun to tap out with one foot.  Their smiles blazed out and met at that moment, and with a swirl and a swish of skirts she left him.  Stepping out into the empty middle of the quiet room, she straightened her back, lifted her arms and her chin, closed her eyes, and waited.

And the music flowed, out from his memory and down through his fingers into the fiddle and then to her feet, and her hips, her arms, her entire body.  Dan fiddled and tapped his foot, and someone, somewhere had a tambourine, shrill and sharp sounding, but they understood the beat, so Dan let it play.  Her eyes closed, Agueda swayed and began to shake her hips, and slowly the catcalls and appreciative whoops died down as those watching began to fall under her spell.  It wasn't just a seduction of the body; that was easy enough for anyone to do.  This, what Agueda wove with her body and Dan's music, this was more, so much more than that.  It was a seduction of the soul, of the heart, a drawing in and carrying away from the world about them, a losing of them all in the fragile, mysterious web of sound and movement.

"Duende", it was called, one of the few Spanish words Dan knew.  "Duende," if musician and dancer could meet there, in that perfect moment of music and dance, of passion and soul and heart, and as Agueda poured herself into the movement of her body, Dan poured his own heart into the strings of his fiddle, reaching across to her, trying to bridge the gap and transport them all.

And, like the smiles they had exchanged,  somewhere in the middle they met.  It was that absolute union of his music and her rhythm, fiddle scraping and skirts swirling and both of them swaying in the lamplight, the two of them together weaving their spell round the entire room.

Duende.

And when it was over, there was a single collective moment of silence, that golden, timeless, breathless moment where the artist knows he's been heard, the souls about him captured for his own.  Then the room exploded, and coins flew through the air with the cheers, showering down around Agueda.  Feet stomped, men roared, whores shrieked and called their approval.  Dan's eyes met Agueda's above the melee, and he knew the poor, pudgy whore still beside him could offer him no greater fulfillment than the shy smile Agueda now tendered him, no finer wine for him tonight than the rapturous fulfillment in her dark eyes.

Two ragged children had appeared and were scooping up the coins on the floor.  The melee had not calmed, but had come together with one voice, a booming roar of "more more more!"  He lifted his eyebrows at Agueda and she nodded, but he knew better than to try right away for another dance like the one they'd just done.  Instead he kicked sideways and connected with Harris's leg.  The man was educated in more ways than one; let him put it to good use tonight.

He didn't answer Harris's irritated inquiry, Dan simply looked back to where Agueda waited, in the middle of the dance floor, then lifted his fiddle once more and began to play.  He played music he'd poached one summer afternoon, lying high in a tree and spying on some London gentry as they played at being country folk for a while.  The half dozen young, overdressed couples had spent hours on a complicated, repetitive dance of leaping and turning that fascinated Dan almost as much as the music the three servants had grown dizzy playing.  He'd played the melody once for Harris, to see if the man knew the name, and the man had not only known the name but all the steps.  Harris had rhapsodized about the dance for days, and even tried to teach Perkins the lady's part, much to the boy's disgust.  But tonight, well, Harris was a damn fine teacher, and Agueda a damn fine dancer.  If she didn't know it already, she'd soon pick up the finer points of the dance from him.

Harris had dumped his whore and was out on the floor, bouncing on his toes and grinning his roguish grin, one hand out to Agueda, before Dan had finished the first four bars.  As he stood in front of her, Agueda's eyes looked over his shoulder to lock with Dan's, her uncertainty obvious.  He nodded and smiled at her with a short nod toward Harris.

"Go a'ead, Lass.  He'll teach 'ee and mind 'is manners, too."

Her eyes held his for a second, then crinkled in a small smile before she dipped her head towards him and turned to take Harris's hand.  Dan repeated the first bars a few more times while Harris took Agueda carefully through the moves, and soon enough she was following him with no problems, and the entire room was clapping and cheering as they leaped and danced around each other while Dan played the hundred-years-old music over and over again.

After that everyone's feet had an itch to scratch, and nobody seemed to think it odd that Harris escorted Agueda to the bench beside Dan while the floor filled with couples for the next dance.  She sat there, sipping ale from Harris's jug while Dan played a reel, and then a jig.  Then it was a song to be sung, and another couples' dance.  Cooper, who had disappeared for an almost indecently short amount of time with his own chosen lady, appeared before Dan, and with a smile gallantly bowed and held a hand out to Agueda.  With a wary glance at Cooper, she looked up at Dan uncertainly.  He smiled and nodded, and she went willingly enough then to dance with the tall, thin, pick-lock.  Harris claimed her next, with no hesitating on her part, and then Perkins tried, but he couldn't stand up straight enough and though Dan grinned his approval, she laughingly pushed the lad away, back into the arms of his somewhat disgruntled whore.  Other men came up to dance with her, but when Dan shrugged at her enquiring looks, Agueda either ignored them or scowled at them, refusing to dance with anyone but Harris or Cooper.

Dan played on, whatever music was requested, but forever aware of where Agueda was, seated beside him or out on the dance floor with Cooper or Harris.  Taking a much needed break, his hand brushed hers as she held Harris's jug up to him, and the smile she returned for his said she was as aware as he of the connection they'd made.  He played for her alone four or five times more, reaching deep within himself for the songs and rhythms that would soar with her passion and soul.  Once she danced slowly, the music and the dance that of sorrow and loss, but the rest were faster, celebratory, life's joys and passions fulfilled.  Judging by the coins ringing on the floor each time, those efforts were at least as successful as the first.

Then, finally, after a fast dance that left her gasping for breath, Agueda shook her head when Harris beckoned to her with the ale jug, and with a lingering smile for Dan, she turned away.  Unable to fend off the sudden sense of loss he felt, the fiddle drooped in his hands as he watched her wend her way through the thinning crowd towards the far side of the room.  Rodriguez lurked against the wall there, receiving the latest tribute from the urchins who had scoured the floor after every one of Agueda's dances.

"Dan!  Hey, Dan!"  Dan's attention swiveled back to find Cooper staring down at him, smiling hugely.  "Bit bewitched, are we?" the taller man asked.

Harris stood at Cooper's shoulder, smirking in Dan's direction as he shrugged into the green Rifleman's jacket he'd reclaimed from the woman he'd draped it over earlier.  After a second, Dan grinned back at the two and shrugged, before turning to find his own jacket.  Bewitched, aye, that was as good a word as any.  Well, rumor did have it they'd be sent on patrol tomorrow; it was probably best to head out now.  Still, he looked over his shoulder towards the woman standing at the wall across the room, only to find her watching him.  As he returned her smile, Dan dared to think that maybe the bewitchment went both ways.

Cooper had moved over and was attempting to shift a limp Perkins out of his corner on the floor, trying without much luck to sort between the lad's muddled clothes and those of the woman whose bare chest he snored against.  Dan finally located his own jacket on the floor as well, beneath the bench where the short whore had fallen asleep on it, in a last ditch effort to claim his attentions for the night, he supposed.  Handing his fiddle to Harris and kneeling with a weary creak in his knees, Dan managed to shift her off of it without waking the poor woman.  She'd tried hard for his few coins tonight, and if he had them to spare he'd give them to her just for the effort she'd made.  But he didn't, and maybe next time she'd mark her prey better.  He tried to ignore the fact that he'd lost all interest in her the minute Agueda appeared.

A covert glance as he slipped his arms into his coat and buttoned it showed Agueda in deep conversation with Rodriguez, the man counting out coins to her.  She glanced up and their gazes met across the room, and again, Dan smiled.  She started to smile in return, but then Rodriguez leaned over to her and whispered something, smiling slyly at Dan as he did so.  Agueda jerked back as if stung, and glared bitterly at Rodriguez for a long moment.  Harris's hand on Dan's arm arrested the half step he'd taken towards her, but again, Agueda didn't seem to need his help.  She leaned over and said something to Rodriguez in a low voice, and now it was his turn to look startled and then glare at her.  The smile she gave him as she tucked the coins he'd given her into her bodice was poisonous, and then she spat on the floor by his boot and stalked regally away.

Absently taking the fiddle from Harris, Dan's eyes followed her as she stopped at a rear table and began gathering cups and jugs onto a tray.  It was his turn to jump when Rodriguez appeared at his elbow.  He turned to the oily man, noticing that Harris had stepped over to stand beside him.  Cooper, still trying to sort boy from whore in the corner, stood as well, and the smaller man smiled behind his drooping mustache and gestured reassuringly at the three.  Still keeping a wary eye on the proceedings, Cooper returned to his task, but Harris stayed beside Dan.  Rodriguez held out one hand towards Dan, making a small encouraging wave with it when he didn't respond right away.

What he found in his hand when he did finally hold it out was a small but weighty pile of coins.  Rodriguez said something in Spanish and Harris translated:

"Agueda made a deal with him before she asked you to play for her.  That's your share of the money that was thrown tonight."  Harris's tone was appreciative, and as Dan hefted the coins in his hand he was too.  Unthinking, he looked across the room to where he'd last seen Agueda, only to find her watching the proceedings.  She smiled and nodded at him, and made a go-ahead motion with her hands.  Closing his own hand around the money, he nodded his thanks to her, and she dipped her head to him before lifting the overburdened tray and turning away.  Not without one last glance over her shoulder at him, though, as she disappeared into the nether regions of the brothel's kitchen.

Harris jogged Dan with his own elbow, and grinned unrepentantly when Dan glared at him.  But it was Rodriguez who soured Dan's stomach, and ruined the evening as well.  The man was still standing in front of him, having seen the entire exchange with Agueda.  He grasped Dan's elbow with one hand, and jerked his head in the direction she had disappeared in.

"Ah, Agueda.  She is special, no?"  His eyebrows lifted lasciviously, and his teeth flashed as the smile that was more leer than anything crawled out from behind the mustache.  Unsure of either the man himself or where the conversation was headed, Dan simply stared at him, conscious of the same reaction from Harris, and then Cooper, who'd finally gotten Perkins somewhat revived and up on his feet.  Rodriguez's grin grew, took in all the men, and then he leaned in towards Dan.

"She is not normally..." He paused, searching for the right word, finally coming up with "available," glancing to Harris for approval.  At Harris's reluctant nod, he turned his attention back to Dan, sliding his hand up to Dan's shoulder before leaning to whisper conspiratorially, "but for you, if you like, I will make her...available."  He relished the term, licking his lips, and leering again.  "Agueda, she is...she will fight, for she is a woman of much spirit, no?" Dan pulled back as the man sighed, rolling his eyes rapturously, before leering up at him.  "But *I* promise she is worth it.  For you, perhaps, tonight?" he invited, the oily smile growing impossibly larger, as the man obviously took great delight in contemplating the prospect of Agueda's humiliation.

Aghast, Dan gaped at Rodriguez, his mind whirling with the implications of the short speech for a shocked moment before he reached up to fling the wretch's hand off his shoulder.  Harris's grip on his elbow stopped him from following Rodriguez as the man backed away, his smile now faded to a knowledgeable leer.  Dan jerked his arm free, and stepped forward anyway, glaring at Rodriguez for a moment.

"No," he said firmly, and then repeated himself:  "No."  He glared until finally the other man shrugged and walked away, still with that faint leering smile on his face.  Dan brushed at his soiled jacket and resisted a shudder as he turned to his friends.

"Cor, what a right bastard," said Cooper, looking slightly ill himself as he supported a semi-conscious Perkins with one arm.

"No doubt," replied Harris, shaking his head and giving Dan a sympathetic look, before turning to fish Perkins' few coins from the pocket of the lad's jacket.  He knelt and put most of the coins in the limp hand of the lad's woman, oblivious in the corner, folding her fingers tightly around them before he stood and returned the three remaining coins to the boy's pocket. Then looking at his companions, he lifted an eyebrow and jerked his head towards the stairs and the door, barely visible through the evening's accumulated smoke.

"Well, are we away?"

Unable to shake the memory of Rodriguez's leer, Dan fought another shudder, but he nodded.  Stumbling as he started away from his bench, he saw one pudgy arm laying out on the floor, and sighed.  Tugging on Harris's jacket, he handed his fiddle to the man when he turned back to him.  Harris shook his head with a rueful grin as Dan took three coins from his own take for the night, and then bent over to shake the short whore awake.  She came to willingly enough when he pressed the money into her hand, and he was hard pressed to fend off her gratitude.  Then he pocketed the rest of the coins and stood, accepting his fiddle back from Harris.

They caught up with Cooper and Perkins at the stairs, and between them the three men dragged the drooping lad up and out of the haze.  Dan couldn't resist one last look behind him before he stepped out the door.  But other than the few snoring drunks and the unlucky whores who were still hoping for a client, there was nothing but the servers cleaning up the last dishes, and an unsmiling Rodriguez, standing in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, watching the Riflemen leave.

It wasn't until he stepped outside and took a deep breath of the clean night air that Dan's weariness hit him, and he staggered with the force of it.  Harris was there immediately, and Dan smiled up at his friend as the man steadied him.

"Hell of a night, Dan.  I didn't know you could play like that."  The moonlight in the narrow street glinted off Harris's smile and his glasses, forever perched halfway down his nose.

"I didn't either," Dan chuckled, standing up straight, and taking another deep breath of the fresh air before nodding away Harris's solicitous hand.

"The bloody corps bugler could probably play like that, Harris, if he'd had Dan's inspiration tonight."  Cooper grabbed Perkins' belt to keep the lad from falling face first on the cobblestones, and then stared over at Dan, his expression worshipful.  "Never seen anything like it in me life, the way that woman could dance."

Perkins stumbled and as Cooper deftly caught him again, the lad chimed in with a mumbled "I didn't know anyone could *move* like that."

They all laughed at his observation and with that Dan shook off the last of the sick feeling his encounter with Rodriguez had left him with.  They headed down the narrow, winding street towards the outskirts of town and the English Army's encampment.

It was a mark of how tired he was that the former poacher didn't see her first.  The small group of men hadn't reached the far end of the building when Harris suddenly reached out and grabbed Dan's shoulder.  He tensed, senses alert, but then Cooper laughed, and Harris too, before giving Dan a small shove forward.

"I hope you ain't completely played out, Dan," Cooper said, gesturing at the shadowed corner of the building a few feet away.  Dan followed his gesture, and felt rather than saw his friends step back, allowing him a bit of privacy.

The few gold coins glinted against her hair, raven in the moonlight, and with a tinkle of her bracelets, Agueda stepped out from the wall she'd been standing half behind.  She waited while he took the few steps necessary to meet her, and there, in the pale light of the moon, he saw the spell they had woven together lingering in her eyes, their glittering magic unmarred by whatever debauchery Rodriguez had implied tonight.  Undeniable as well was the longing, the loneliness in her gaze as she reached up, brushing the back of her hand across his cheek and then laying her hand on his face.  Dan caught his breath and leaned into the caress before he reached to gently cup her face in return, brushing her lips with his thumb.

Bewitched?  Oh, aye, he was bewitched, drunk as any old sot on music and dancing and the woman in front of him.

"Don't look to me like she's putting up much of a fight," Cooper half-whispered behind them, before Harris shushed him.

Dan opened his mouth, but her fingers covered his lips before he could speak.  He released her chin then, to capture her hand in his own, kissing it and nodding slightly.  She was right.  To speak now would ruin the magic they'd woven between them, with only his music and her dance.  Agueda smiled softly and stepped back into the shadows, pulling at him with both hands to follow her.  Dan felt his own face relax in an answering grin.  
   
"Here, Dan, I'll see this gets home for you."  Appearing at his side, Harris liberated the fiddle from Dan's slack grasp, and Dan shot him a grateful look before focusing again on Agueda.  Her face was all he could see, halflit in the darkness, and when he stepped forward and bent to kiss her he felt the spell reach out and take him again.  With one quick glance backwards at his grinning friends he allowed Agueda to lead him away, into the shadowed passage beside the brothel.

 

* * *


End file.
